To Try Again, or The Tale of a Family
by Threesmallcrows
Summary: When Izaya left, he ripped this family open. Now, he's back- after a two year absence. And they are dying again, mother and daughters, father and son. Why can't you see what you do to us, Izaya? You shouldn't have come back. COMPLETE.
1. The Beginning, or The Siblings

Note: I _detest_ being sick. So, of course, I make Izaya sick :D Sorry Izaya.

I apologize for any inaccuracies involving the Orihara family. I tried to envision raising a child like Izaya in order to characterize his mom and dad.

_**To Try Again**_**, or The Tale of a Family**

**1. **_The Beginning,__or_** The Siblings**

Izaya's sneeze shatters the peace like a gunshot.

It is the morning, and they are bathed by the white-blue sunlight of the depths of winter. We are in the kitchen of the Orihara household. It is around 11:00, and all three siblings are slumped in various poses of half-sleep around their worn kitchen table. Birds chirp sharply outside the window. The air is bitingly cold. The parents are not home, leaving the children alone, as much as Mairu, Kururi, and Izaya can really be called children—that is to say, both completely and not at all. Mairu's breakfast plate is quickly being stripped of its contents. She chews viciously, ripping the food with her sharp teeth. Kururi swallows contentedly, slowly. They're happy to ignore the dark presence of their older brother, a black blot somewhere in the shady corner of the table.

At some point, though, a response of some sort is requested of Izaya, and what comes instead is a sneeze. The twins pause, and properly glance at Izaya for the first time since he came wandering home at 2 in the morning. He appears not to have heard them at all. His eyes are glazed, gazing somewhere in the distance. His nose is running copiously.

Mairu leaps on to the table violently, crushing her heel in to half of Kururi's plate of eggs as Kururi sighs in disgust. "Oi. Iza-nii! Are you fucking listening to us?"

"Hmmm?" Izaya turns his head slowly to her. Too slowly for Mairu's demanding taste. She grabs his face in her small fingers, pulling his nose to hers, squatting on the table like a savage monkey. Izaya winces a little as her sharp fingernails slide cruelly into his chin.

It's just too obvious. She feels instantly that his skin is hot, burning like an iron in the cool air, and is mildly surprised that he's not giving off steam. He's pastier looking than normal. His fingers are limp, devoid of movement, cased quietly in the long black sleeves of his shirt. His mess of crow's-wings hair is glued to his forehead with small beads of sweat. Mairu releases Izaya's chin abruptly, grinning, her conclusion reached. Kururi raises an eyebrow, looking up from her contemplation of the ruined breakfast before her.

"Iza-nii is _sick_!" She spits it at the air like a dagger, an accusation.

He speaks for the first time all morning. "Mairu… chan… could you please be a little quieter?" Izaya lolls to the side, sliding farther on to the table. "And I'm not sick… just tired… from hearing you two bicker all morning…"

Mairu is not fooled for an instant. "My ass you're not sick."

He closes his eyes in response, the lids sinking like twin white flags. Kururi thinks to herself that he must really be at his limits.

Mairu is very, very pleased. Unlike herself and Kururi, who constantly manage to catch the flu from their classmates, Izaya only gets sick once in a very long while. But when he does, he goes full out. It is fun stuff for Mairu, who—like all siblings—enjoys seeing her brother suffer. As a last piece of insurance, Mairu forces an old-fashioned mercury thermometer down his throat. He takes it almost mildly, and Kururi giggles because he looks ridiculous with it sticking out of his mouth, the glass glowing in the clear light. When the (inevitable) results come a few minutes later, Mairu waves the one-hundred-and-three-degrees-Fahrenheit reading in front of Izaya's eyes. He chooses to sigh and look away, knowing the battle's half lost already.

Mairu scampers off to fetch the medicine while Izaya mutters obscenities at the table. He blearily shoots evil looks in the direction of Kururi, whom Mairu has posted at the table to make sure "Iza-nii doesn't try and escape the delicate ministrations of his angel sisters!" When Mairu returns, there is a brief struggle of half a minute or so, but really, Izaya doesn't stand a chance. Kururi, occupied in pinning Izaya's hands behind his back, wants to laugh as her sister deposits load after load of the stuff in his mouth, purposefully ignoring Izaya's pained facial expressions. He is such a child sometimes.

Afterwards, they allow their poor brother to move again. Mairu is delighted with herself, laughing evilly with one egg-covered sock planted on a chair and spoon in hand. Izaya accidentally sways against Kururi as he gets up, and she can feel the heat of his ribs burning through his thin black clothes. So she silently pulls Izaya towards her bedroom—which used to be his, until he left— instead of the couch where he habitually sleeps on his rare visits to home.

When they get in the door, she pushes him forward, almost gently. He falls obediently in to her fluffy bed, pulling up the ridiculously cute bunny-printed blanket, his body ordering him to rest for once in his dynamic life. Kururi chooses to remain in her room, hearing Mairu turn on some loud reality TV show that she doesn't like downstairs. Izaya falls asleep quickly, exhausted, ignoring with ease the drama that erupts on screen below him. He's forced to curl like a cat in the imprint his sister's body has made over the years, because he's far too big for her bed—for his own bed from a childhood a millennia behind. His breath is light and hot in the air. There is something about his face when he's unconscious, Kururi thinks. There's none of the usual pretention, none of the arrogance or self-assurance. He looks a lot younger when he's asleep. Sleep washes the sin away, makes him a child again.

Dad's gone on one of his perpetual business trips for a few days, so Mom is the first to receive the news that the eldest child of the Oriharas is back. It does not go well.

She walks in the door, carrying groceries in one hand and shedding her shoes awkwardly with her feet. In her movements is none of the litheness that Izaya embodies, none of the quickness the twins operate on. She is just an ordinary, harassed, middle-aged mother of three. Mairu stares at her, eyes wide and fierce. Lately Mom and Mairu have been on worse and worse terms with one another. It can only be a matter of time before Mairu moves out, and when that time comes Kururi knows she will go with her sister.

"Mom."

Their mother is distracted, unaware of the danger above her, in the very atmosphere, waiting to strike. "What is it?"

"Izaya's home."

The silence is deadly. Kururi holds her breath. Their mother places the groceries slowly, carefully, on the countertop, like objects made of hot glass. Her attempts to act casual make Kururi want to cry for her, to bathe in those unshed tears.

Mom hasn't seen Izaya in nearly two years, hasn't received a single text or call or e-mail in all that time, and now he is home.

After a moment, she speaks, not looking up, her badly-cut bangs hiding her face. "I suppose he is." She pulls out a chair, the squeaking painful in this awkward silence, slumps over the table.

Mairu's fists clench white underneath the table, and Kururi can smell the fight coming. "_I suppose_?"

Mom gives her a look, like she doesn't know what Mairu's talking about. Kururi wants to scream. It's starting again, starting _again_, and it's only been a minute—

"What kind of a reaction is that? Why do you have to pretend like it's no big deal?"

"I'm not pretending, Mairu." And now Mom has that sickeningly patient tone in her voice, the one she uses whenever they fight. "I mean, what did you expect me to"—

Mairu stomps over Mom's words. "We never see him, for God's sake. He never calls, never comes back except when he's sick, and that's 'cause he can't take care of himself. And the last time was two years ago." She props her feet insolently on the table around which their mother hunches over, and every word is a stab to their mother's heart. Kururi watches their mother bleed. Mairu did always take after Izaya—she's able to aim where it hurts the most.

Their mother looks up with injured eyes. "Mairu"—

The two sets of eyes clash for half a second, woman versus girl, defender versus challenger, mother versus daughter.

"_Never mind. _Forget it." Mairu slams her homework done on the table, takes out a pencil and starts violently making mistakes in her make-up essay, leaving Kururi and her mother in silence in the kitchen.

Their mom makes soup in the wake of Mairu's anger, the fragrant smell wafting through the kitchen like an apology. Mairu scratches away angrily, mumbling to herself and erasing so hard that the table quakes in fear. Kururi sits there and pretends to work, instead watching her mother through slanted eyes, watching Mom's reaction to the news of her son's return. Mom stirs each ingredient in with a frantic sort of hastiness, re-measures the spices three times before she can convince herself it's the right amount. Her fingers shake, and she spills the water twice. Her feet jitter against the floor. Kururi wants to run up and grab her shoulders, shake her, tell her to slow down, calm down for God's sake. Izaya's not going anywhere, this time. He's not running away again.

Eventually, the soup gets itself done. Kururi sees Mom taste it once, twice, making sure it's not too hot, not too cold, not too salty. Making sure it's perfect. Kururi sees Mairu watching as well, sees Mairu's eyes seeth with anger at their mother's nervous attempts at love.

Their mother looks up at Kururi, ignoring Mairu. "Kururi, can you take this up to your brother?"

Kururi glances at Mairu. They've just watched her slaving away in the kitchen—when they both know Mom doesn't like cooking and makes Dad do it half the time—to make this soup, they know Mom hasn't seen Izaya in two years now, and she wants Kururi to take it up?

She's afraid, they realize together. That's the answer. Their mother is afraid to see Izaya, afraid to see what stranger he's morphed into this time.

Mairu opens her mouth to comment, and Kururi stands up abruptly, the scraping of the chair closing Mairu's lips. "Yeah." She grabs the soup awkwardly and lurches up the stairs, leaving the storm brewing below. She saves the fragile woman she calls mother from the violent words of Mairu, for the moment. But Kururi knows that this is the end of nothing.

Izaya is half-lucid when Kururi gets there. He smiles groggily at the blurry face of his sister, and mutters something about how he shouldn't have come here. "Mairu's way too happy, probably," he whispers in to the bed frame, blazing up like a fiery angel and still managing to look happy.

There is a pause.

Kururi hates Izaya in that moment. He's barely been back a few hours and already their carefully patched sanity is flaking, the mask of normalness their family wears in his absence being ripped away by his presence. The wounds are reopening; the bandages Mom applied to herself in the dead of night are falling. Stability is being lost fast.

"You're right."

"Hm?"

"You shouldn't have come here."

"What?"

"I _said_ you shouldn't have come here!"

She shoves the soup on the bedstand, spilling it a little, and all but runs out the door. She can't stand looking at his feverish, confused face for another second. How can he not know? Doesn't he know what he's doing to them?


	2. Part Two, or The Sisters

**2. **_Part Two, or___**The Sisters**

That night, Kururi is forced to share a room with Mairu, since Izaya is in hers—his, from a long time ago, a time when Mom and Dad and sisters and brother were happy together.

On second thought though, that time is a fairy-tale in their household. It never existed in reality, only in dreams and rumors of hopes.

Meanwhile, the silence is stormy. Kururi does not say anything.

Mairu hates that her sister doesn't speak, because she wants to scream, to break something, to hurt something, and her twin is not complying at all. So. She breaks the quiet at midnight, after a good hour and a half of listening to each other pretend to be asleep. Her voice falls down in to Kururi's ears from the upper bunk, the whisper infecting the dark.

"I hate her."

"What?" Mairu hears Kururi shift in bed. She looks down and dimly sees Kururi sit up a little and rub her eyes.

"Don't _what _me," Mairu snaps, half-whispering. "Mom, dumbass."

"Why?"

"_Because_._" _Mairu is frustrated at her sister's calmness.

"That doesn't make any sense."

Mairu snorts in impatience.

"She's such a fucking coward."

"Well"—

"I mean really. '_I suppose he is_'? What kind of an answer is that? Why doesn't she just admit she misses him?"

Mairu's really going now. There's no stopping this train. Her thoughts come out in fragments, floating in the night.

"I guess… she just pisses me off, the way she look so fucking _pathetic _whenever we mention him. As if it's our fault he doesn't stay here. It's like"—

—And here comes the truth, ready or not—

— "She loves us because she wants to love him. That's the reason why she's so fucking possessive and shit, you know? The reason why she's such a controlling _bitch_, a lot of the time?"

Kururi's silence encourages her to continue.

"I mean, it makes sense. Izaya—well, she barely even got to know him. He left—no, it's like he _escaped _from her control, and that's why she's always freaking out over us. Because we're her substitute children, we're her stand-in, kind of—for him. And then—and then, when he actually shows up, she can't even look him in the face until we're gone. She's too big of a fucking coward to. As if she feel guilty, because _I know she loves him best_."

There's stillness again, except for the sobbing of the truth.

In the bottom bunk, Kururi curls up in the suddenly cold night. She thinks of Mairu's clenched fists, the arguments, Mairu's eyes hot and wet sometimes, the way Mairu picks on Izaya every time she sees him. She thinks of Mairu's headstrong, mischievous personality, so over-done, a mask grown over her face—the face _she _should know best, the face she thought she knew better than her own. They are each other's image. They are closer than the ground is to the earthworm, always together. When did this distance sneak between them? She thinks of Mairu watching their mother, always watching, watching Mom look into the distance, watching Mom yearn for their brother. Is this really what she thinks? Kururi wants to tell Mairu it's not true, that their mother wouldn't be too heartless—but isn't it true? Isn't it heartless? Isn't this love? What can one small teenage girl do when faced with the crushing weight of reality?

Mairu is spent now, quickly falling asleep. She wraps up her speech, waving her hand in the cold air in attempted nonchalance.

"What does she fucking want, anyways? She should just make up her mind, really. She's a fucking adult, for God's sake, not a fucking child anymore… not a child..."

Like you? Kururi thinks. Like me, like Iza-nii, like all of us?

Kururi doesn't say anything for several long moments. Just when Mairu is beginning to think Kururi went back to sleep, her calm voice drifts up from the gloom below.

"I guess she wants Izaya to stay with us. So we can be like a"—

That word that is unholy to the Oriharas, she does not utter. The unspoken spreads itself out, fat and stupid and _clumsy_, in the shadows. Mairu mutters something incomprehensible, turns over and doesn't say anything more.

Family_. _They spend so much time pretending they are one that it tires them all.They keep looking for it, when everyone knows it was destroyed forever when Izaya began not coming home.

Kururi drifts to sleep hours later to the sounds of her sister's need.


	3. Part Three, or Mother and Daughters

**3. **_Part Three, or___**Mother and Daughters**

The next morning, Mom looks worse than ever. Her eyes are ringed with shadows. Kururi heard the creaking of the steps late at night as their mother retreated to her—Izaya's—room. Breakfast is tense with the knowledge of Izaya's warm body upstairs, sleeping, fighting its own fight, unaware.

"Mom?"

"Yes?" She avoids Mairu's glances.

Kururi hesitates, on the brink of chaos. But she has to. Get the truth out. So Mairu will stop crying at night, so their mom will stop crying at night, so she can stop wondering.

"Do you still love Izaya?"

The silence rings, like the air after a gunshot, bleeding thoughts in slow motion.

Do you love _us_?

Or just the fact that we resemble him?

Do you trace his eyes when you look in ours?

Or does that make you hate us, that we are a reminder of your greatest failure?

So many questions. So little time.

There is a pause.

"Of course," answers their mother. The end of her statement goes up a little, like a question to answer a question. The light streams in, makes her hair a halo. She repeats it for clarification. "Of course I do." She laughs nervously.

And Mairu can't stand it anymore, this falseness and semblance of normalcy. She wants to break her mother into pieces, force Izaya's image in her face and scream that he will _never_ return to her, that she and Kururi are all she has left, and if she doesn't acknowledge that soon, they will be gone too.

"Do you _love_ him even though he left?"

Mairu hurls the words in to the air like weapons, so filled with hate.

"You told me yourself, he's almost never been home three straight nights since he was fucking _ten._ You _never_ knew what he did at school, who he talked to, who his friends were—who his enemies were. When he got a cell, _you_ didn't know the number. He moved out when he was fifteen, right?"

Mairu keeps spitting out the statements, staring angrily in to their mother's eyes. She is crazed now, with the anger pulsing through her veins like scorching metal.

"And after he graduated, you never saw him. At holidays, birthdays? _Nothing_. Not a sign. He only comes home when you aren't around. I wonder why? It's _not_ fucking rocket science. You just don't want to admit it, because you're _weak_. You know nothing about Izaya. _Nothing_. And who's fault _is_ it?"

Mom bites her lip, her shoulder shaking. "Mairu, Mairu"—

"Does _he _fucking love _you_?" she shrieks.

Because _I_ love you. But I hate you too, that you gave your heart to Izaya, who won't take good care of it. I know he won't; he can't even take care of himself—look at his sleeping face, upstairs, clueless, childish—more than me, maybe, and I'm the younger one. He'll only carelessly crush it the way he crushes cellphones. Look at the way he's treated you, Mom—the way he's treated all of us. He doesn't care, but _I_ do. Give up looking for what you can't have, and love what's in front of your eyes. Give him up and accept _me_.

But of course Mairu can't say it like that. She deals only in accusations and anger.

Kururi closes her ears, because she knows what's coming now. It's inevitable. She numbly watches her sister's mouth fly open and shut, watches the spit dancing out of Mom's mouth, an ugly grey. They argue about disrespect and language and authority, accusations flying like poisoned arrows. Their words go around and around in a vicious circle, and neither gets to the point, the problem: Izaya and his perpetual absence.

It ends with their mother storming up the stairs to her unconscious son, looking like she's about to cry. Mairu's eyes, however, are drier than desert-baked stone, her tongue blood-red in the weak morning sunlight, as she screams at their mother from the table. "I fucking _detest_ you. I hate how _pathetic_ you are and the way you cry at night when you think no one can hear you. I hate you and Dad and most of all _this sorry excuse for a family_!"

Mom pauses for a moment, already half-way up the stairs. She opens her mouth, slowly. Hesitantly. Kururi can see phantom blood trickling from her beaten, bruised body. She closes her eyes because she can't look at Mairu.

"Mairu. You"—

"I fucking _what_, Mom?" And by now Mairu's sentences have ceased to make sense. All that matters are the emotions behind them.

They regard each other, mother and daughters, across this terrible chasm opening in the floor of their home, stretching for a million miles, forbidding and insuperable as deep sea chasm and white glacier peak and slow rivers of glowing lava.

"I don't know"—

"Don't know _anything_"—

"Why you hate me. I really don't. But I regret—with all my heart— whatever I've done to you to make you feel this way. I really do."

And she leaves, defeated, drawing her sleeve across her eyes, leaving nothing but silence. Upstairs, the muffled sound of Izaya's cough drifts like scissors through empty cloth.

The saddest part of it all is that Kururi believes her. That Mom really doesn't know what she's doing to Mairu, to Kururi, to the remaining children, the survivors. Doesn't know how much she needs her son, how that need pushes her daughters away from her, surely, slowly.

Quickly now, the insanity of their so-called family is growing.


	4. Part Four, or The Parents

**4. **_Part Four, or___**The Parents**

Their dad comes home late that night. Kururi hears the rumblings of the garage door opening as their weather-beaten van slides in.

Mom pushes it in Dad's face the moment the door shuts.

"Izaya's home."

Kururi hears Dad's old suitcase drop. The thud of it against the floor sounds like surprise.

"Izaya?"

He's incredulous. This is wrong. Dad is never surprised—he's serious, quiet, calm, distant— the type person who would read the morning newspaper and sip their coffee when the world ends.

Well, Kururi supposes with a bitter laugh in her heart, the world is ending in its own quiet way, just for them.

"Did you—Izaya, he's back?"

This, too, is wrong. Dad does not stumble when he speaks, not even slightly. His words have always cut straight through the air, traveling a heavy-footed path, like a chain of sturdy links stretched taut by experience and age. But now Izaya's risen up from the blackness near the safe road, given him a hard push, kicked his feet out from under him on this path. Suddenly, the road is a razorblade's edge, thin and sharp and always half a centimeter from absolute oblivion.

"You heard me," snaps Mom. "Orihara Izaya. Your son? Or had you forgotten?" There is a silence, in which Kururi hears Mom cross the creaking floor to sit on their old couch. Her voice is strained and confused.

"Why is he back?"

"What does that matter?" Isn't it enough, isn't it enough that he's here? Her silent question hangs in the air like an abandoned coat.

"That's not what I meant."

She sniffs, loudly, like a warning. "Really? I wonder what you meant, then?"

Dad sees his mistake and reverses quickly, tries to begin anew.

"It's just that he hasn't been back, in so long. I thought he might need something. Money, maybe. Or"—

"Since when has he ever needed our money?" Mom's voice is sharp, rising with anger. "He left when he was sixteen, for God's sake."

He waits for her answer.

Cautiously, now. You walk on a razorblade. She's not the woman you married, anymore, in some ways. That frail woman is on the breaking point, so for God's sake, handle her carefully, carefully, like a fallen angel of diamond strength turned to cracked glass. Keep those silent scars from opening, from bleeding.

"But he's not back for no reason"—

"Of course not," she snaps. "He's ill." Her pale hands twist in her lap, cold and seeking nonexistent warmth.

"Ill…Is it—something serious?" The suspense rises.

"Just one of his colds. You know how it is when he gets sick." She half-laughs, weakly. "He always was like this, before."

"He was, I remember. That time when he was eight"—

"Oh, God. Sicker than a dog."

Together, they bask in the memory of times when Izaya was young enough to let them take care of him.

"So, then"—

"Mairu and I fought today, again." A shaky sigh flops through the night, loud enough that Kururi can hear it clearly. "I don't know, I really don't know. I don't know what I'm doing wrong." Her voice disintegrates in to a sob at the end.

Dad leaps in to comfort-mode way too fast, and it's a warning. "Ayame, it's okay. It's okay. You're not doing anything wrong. It's just—teenage girls, you know how they can be. Remember you and your mother, at that age? Wasn't it just the same?"

"Maybe. I guess it was, kind of."

"See? It's nothing to do with you. God knows Mairu is a handful sometimes"—

"_Don't _blame her"—

"And I'm not. But I'm not blaming you, either. It's no one's fault."

Dad's voice is soft, so unlike his usual stern, business-like self. In the night, his gentleness dares to emerge.

After a while. "Hitoshi?"

"What?" He's probably got a hand on her shoulder right now. She's probably hunched over, with her wet face in her pale hands.

"Do you think"—

"Yes?"

"I'm a bad mother?"

And there's the truth, again.

"Ayame! That's ridiculous. Of course you're not"—

"It's just that!" she sobs, half-hysterical now. "It's _not_ obvious at all, _not _ridiculous. Think about it. Izaya. We barely even got to know him. I feel like—like one day he was a baby in our arms, and the next second he was gone. I never—_never—_ even got to know him. He left before I could do that. And he's never come back, since. Only to see his little sisters, not me or you. God knows I love him, I do, but he breaks my heart, and it's not his fault. Does he hate us, do you think? What did we do wrong?" And she is sobbing in earnest, now.

"It's okay, it's o"—

"And I'm so afraid, Hitoshi, I'm so afraid. Even in my dreams I only ever see his back, leaving me. I can't look at him—all I see are regrets, and a man I don't know, who I never knew, not my baby, not my child. And I can't not look at him, because God knows the next time I see him it'll be at his funeral. And the most frightening thing"—

"What is it?"

She breaks down completely. "That I—That I won't be able to cry. Because he has become—become, a s-stranger to me." Her sobs overpower the night.

Dad tries to glue everything back together. "Ayame. Ayame, honey. Look at me. Izaya will never be a stranger to us. He's our son, _our _son. Don't ever forget that. That boy is wild, and maybe he was never meant to belong to anyone—no, don't cry, I think that's true. We weren't meant to _own _him. But maybe we don't have to own him. We will always be his parents, and he will always be our son."

Will he? Is he? Was he ever?

That frail woman they call mother sobs into Dad's shoulder while he whispers quiet nothings into her ear. Together, they stay up all night, bathing in the cold and bitter light of the moon, choking on tears while the darkness wraps them in its cold arms. And all throughout runs the mantra, "We'll be okay, we'll be okay."

But words can't fix everything. It'll take more than that.

In the end, despite all their arguments and fierce words, it's not Mairu, but Izaya who will always be their mom's greatest regret. Kururi watches Mom watch her ill son, helpless, worrying, and it's like Mom's dying of thirst in an endless desert, throwing herself at abandoned poisoned wells to drink of the dangerously clear water. She can't stand to look at Izaya, thinking only of regrets and her boy slipping quickly away at the age of ten, of the child who is forever lost to her, of the boy who lives a life she will never understand. And when he dies, she'll stare at his corpse and won't be able to cry a tear, because it's a stranger she mourns, not her son.

In a way, he is already dead to her, and that is the greatest tragedy of all.


	5. Interlude, or The Son

**5. **_Interlude, or_** The Son**

The next morning, Mairu and Mom are both quiet, the way they always are after an argument. Even Dad look exhausted, and Kururi knows she is the same. Izaya drains so much from them, so much.

And even then, it's like he's dying. Over the next four days, he doesn't leave Kururi's room except to stagger to the bathroom down the hall, sometimes to vomit. His temperature refuses to drop.

So life continues not-at-all as usual. The girls trudge to school. Their parents head back to work, leaving Izaya on his own for a day.

Izaya, Izaya. In the bed, this damned bed which he is confined to, he twitches as fevered dreams fill his mind. His fingers clench weakly around his sister's blankets, and he curls in on himself when he's cold, then kicks the covers aside when he's inexplicably hot again. The world tilts violently around him. In his mind, the city turns odd colors and shadows kill him over and over, yelling that he has done them wrong—but the strangest part is he doesn't know any of them, doesn't remember what it is he's done. Shizuo appears, at some point, wearing a ridiculous wresting outfit, and turns in to an enormous water bottle. Shinra is eating Celty's head. Namie's eyes are letter-openers, and she's cutting his papers with her meter-long eyelashes, shredding them and blinking in feigned innocence. He's vaguely aware in some distant part of his mind that he's sick, but he's too worried about the knives hovering over his neck to think about that. Sometimes he feels a hand over his forehead or someone shoveling soup not so gently in to his lips, and he knows someone is in the room, that he has been brought back for an instant to the real world. In his confusion, he soon returns to a strangely threatening Ikebukuro anyways.

At some point, he staggers up and splashes water on his flaming face in the bathroom. He can hear the clock ticking downstairs, and so he knows he is alone. Izaya stares in the cracked mirror, and it is like he is a stranger to himself. _What_ is he doing here? In this house, he is not the information merchant, the mafia-member-killing, Shizuo-pissing-off Izaya-kun. He is a member of the Orihara clan—his mother, his father, his sisters—and it feels wrong, so wrong, to be in the house of his childhood, to which he has no connection whatsoever.

What he _really_ remembers about the place is leaving it, always leaving it. As a teenager, there were no arguments between him and Mom and Dad, because he was never around to argue with. He left them before they had a chance at even moving to grab him back. Twelve years old, he spent every day sleeping in the rooms of friends, acquaintances, strangers. Izaya loved the excitement of opening his eyes to new ceilings every day. He loves the roar of the city, the strangeness of unknown corners. Sixteen years old, and he's running wild through the night, alive and flying like a small crow in the darkness. Twenty, and everything is becoming stranger and stranger, and he loves it all.

There's nothing strange about his house, at all. _Their_ house. It's not his, never was. He can't even say what it is about this place he detests so much—just that it always seems the same, whether after three days or three weeks or three months or an year, so bland, so confining. And he can't stand stillness or boringness or confinement, none of them at all. Everything must change, and that's the only way he'll love it—it's the only law he lives by.

But what about the second part, that everything remains the same, after all? After all, he's _here_, isn't he?

Izaya hates the smell of this house on him, how it lies in his sweaty clothes, sinking into his pores. He laughs, shivering violently, and digs his nails viciously in to his own skin, watches a shadow wince in the mirror. He speaks in the voice of a child. "I want to leave," he whispers. "I hate this place. _Hate _it. I want. To leave. Now."

He gets down the stairs all right, but the slippery wooden floor that tilts beneath him, left-to-right-to-up-to-down like a ship bucking in stormy seas, defeats him. He watches everything suffer violently curved growth spurts. Somehow he's on the floor now. It's cold and dirty against his body, which is comfortable. He puts his fingers to his own head, imagines his brains splattering against the floor in slow motion, then stuffing themselves back in: a gruesome reverse. "_Orihara_ Izaya. Died at age twenty."

Then, slowly, slowly, he crosses himself, still watching his squirming brains out of the corner of his eyes. He can't feel the pain. "Izaya. _Just _Izaya. Born—today, right now—in front of me—_is _me. Amen, may you rest in peace." He can't remember how to baptize someone, or what he's doing. Why doesn't he feel different? He should feel different. Isn't he someone else now?

The answer comes to him in pieces, like broken glass cutting his mind open. You were _always_ this person. You were _never_ Orihara Izaya. You _are_ Izaya,_ just_ Izaya. There isn't a family that bars you in. This isn't a problem for you, is it? Of course not.

But it _is_ a problem for someone else.

Wake up, Izaya. Wake up. Open those sleep-bleared eyes of yours, make them sharp, and face yourself.

Someone else? Who?

Was I sleeping? Am I still alive, or is this what death feels like? What's happening—

When they come back home, he's back in Kururi's room, oblivious.

**Author's Note**: Bleeeeeh. Don't like this chapter at all.


	6. Part Six, or Father and Son

Author's Note: Loved the movie Revolutionary Road, even though I _still_ can't spell revolutionary right the first time and it depressed me for about an entire week. Hence, the reference.

**6. **_Part Six, or___**Father and Son**

The illness continues much as it has in the past few days. Their mother continues to dry her eyes. Mairu continues to act like an aggravation. Kururi continues observing with her wide, clear eyes. Izaya sleeps. Dad hovers, worried and unsure and—somewhere, in the heart of his heart, angry at the pain that's been stirred up. Everything is balanced on a knife's edge, waiting to be cut or to slip and fall in to ten thousand meters of darkness.

One day, in the late afternoon when the sun is slowly creeping towards the horizon, Dad and Izaya collide in the bathroom. Accidentally, Kururi is sure. Izaya avoids Dad like the plague, as a general rule. However, since he's sick already—and Kururi smiles a little at the irony.

Izaya staggers, dizzily, smiling slightly at his parent. His face says "Shit." But what comes out of his mouth is—

"Dad. Hi."

"Izaya"—

"I'm going back to sleep, Dad. Don't wanna get you sick. Bye-bye."

Izaya drunkenly side-steps him, but doesn't quite manage to avoid him. Dad's hand shoots out and clutches Izaya's shoulders with the sternness and stupidity and stubbornness of the Enola Gay and its deathly payload. Izaya's back is facing Dad, so he can't see his face, but Kururi _can _see Izaya's face, sees the way he flinches in distaste. He turns back, slowly, impatient to get back to unconsciousness.

"What?" he spits out, still smiling a little.

"Izaya." Dad sighs, running his hand through his rapidly graying hair. "You're leaving soon, aren't you?" It's not a question.

Izaya laughs weakly, gestures at his burning body and worn mind. "In this state, I doubt it."

Dad chooses to ignore the sarcasm.

"I know, when you leave, you're going to sneak out like you always do."

The denial is instantaneous, automatic. "_Sneaking_?" He manages to sound insulted, too. "I'm not going to _sneak_ anyw"—

"Yes, you are."

Izaya at least has the decency not to say anything at this point. Instead, he leans against the wall, with an expression on his face of impatience. Let's get this over with, his twitching fingers and tired feet proclaim. Hurry up, old man.

"I'm not asking anything of you, Izaya, except. When you leave. Can you please say goodbye to your mother, at least?"

Izaya stares Dad in the eye, and his glance is sharp again for an instant, unsullied by sickness. He recognizes this attempt at emotional blackmail for what it is.

"Why?" The question is needlessly cruel.

"You know why," he counters.

Because you're killing her as it is, already. Are you really going to twist the dagger, too?

Izaya smiles slowly, waving away the sincerity of his emotions with his own indifference, his casual hands.

"Yeah. Yeah… I can do that."

And he staggers away before Dad can say anything else, before he can bind Izaya down with more words and sentiments and promises.

Dad stands there in the empty hallway, frowning a little at the still air. Dad has never understood his son, either. While he is serious, uptight, a business man, always with his shirt tucked and his belt tightened, Izaya is a loose cannon. Bad grades, even though the boy could be a genius. Constant fights for which he never explained anything. Total disrespect for authority, total abandonment of myself and Ayame. So different than myself when I was your age. Why couldn't you be a little more like me—a little more obedient, a little more acknowledging of the rules? Sometimes, Kururi knows that Dad wonders where exactly Izaya came from. He doesn't seem like any son of mine, he thinks. And for a moment he is angry at himself, for not raising the boy the way a man should, for letting Izaya destroy the happiness he and Ayame worked so hard and so long for. They were so in love, twenty years ago. They still are now, but there is always the knowledge of their child, their failed project, between them. They dance on eggshells around it. They're just another broken family hiding behind the white-washed shield of suburbia, living on their very own Revolutionary Road.

And Kururi knows Izaya will _not_ tell them when he leaves, because Izaya thinks that he doesn't owe anything to Dad. Doesn't know any better this man's sacrifice. It's hard for children to appreciate it, sometimes, when all it feels like is an excuse to make you obey. It's for your own good, they say, and Izaya never listened.

She knows why Mairu is angry, now. She knows why Mom is sad. She knows this family is torn, even stern Dad. But why _is _Izaya here? If he's always leaving, why is he always drawn back to this place when he's sick? Why can't he leave them in peace?

One day, she asks him. The light glances over the shadows of his thin, tortured face, dreaming strange dreams.

"Iza-nii?"

Izaya grins weakly at the nickname. "What, Kururi?"

"Why…"

"Hm?"

"Why do you always come here? Come back. Even though…?"

Izaya smiles a little wider and turns his back to her, feeling himself slide back in to the strange realm of his nightmares. He doesn't tell her it's _because_ this ishome that he comes back, always comes back, even if it takes years.

Family is family, even if he cannot bring himself to stay.


	7. The End, or Mother and Son

**7. **_The End, or_** Mother and Son**

On the seventh day, the fever finally breaks. Izaya feels his forehead turn cool again, realizes that he can move smoothly and think quickly. It's like someone has yanked those grey clouds from around the sun of his mind, and he can see the sky.

He is aware, all at once, of the disgusting state of his clothes, but is more importantl aware that he's in _this_ house, which is absolutely unacceptable. His skin itches with the knowledge, and he wants out. Now.

He shoots up, still a little dizzy, firmly resolved to escape. Izaya slips his feet into his shoes, one by one, pushes his sister's door open. He's prepared to make his exit quietly, with as little fuss as possible. He casts his promise to his father aside without even a glance, lettering it shatter like tears in to a still pool on the uncaring floor of the bedroom. He hears the scream of his parents' dream dying, and he turns away from it, disgusted by the sound of it in his ears.

As he walks down these stairs quickly, the feeling intensifies. This is not his home. This is not where he belongs. He belongs in Ikebukuro and Shinjuku, in the big city, chasing waterfalls, defying gravity—not bound and helpless here, like a _human_. He's like a wet ink-splotch on the blank page of these peaceful suburbs, and he can't breathe here, can feel the noose of affection and familial ties tighten around his neck. But he won't let it strangle him. He'll escape, maybe with his throat bruised, but he'll get away to live another day. Izaya hastens his steps, wanting to burst out the door and never look back.

He sees the morning sunlight stream in from outside, like the arms of a mother, welcoming him to escape. Izaya's cold feet hurry to the winter air like estranged lovers.

When.

A shadow slides between him and escape, and Izaya almost wants to scream in frustration—so _close_, damn it. No, his mind yells at the black barrier, no! Not right now. Can't you see I'm dying here? The blackness leans across the doorstep like a gatekeeper. She's home from work early, because even if she doesn't know him, she's not _stupid. _She _does _know that he will try and escape when she's not there. Like all children, Izaya doesn't give his parents enough credit, a lot of the time. She will not let it happen. For once, she stands up tall and refuses to let her son escape again. She will take this pain and make it her own, even if it kills her.

The woman clenches her bony fingers together until they are bleached white by the force of her own grip. They stand, painfully, formally, those undefeatable five or six feet apart.

"Izaya."

And, somehow, with that gift of mothers and mothers alone, in that one word she puts all of her broken heart, all of her aching for this dark child who belongs to no one but the wind and the city. Her bones shatter with it. Her eyes bleed.

Why don't you love me? Why can't you be a child for me, again? Why do you hate me?

"Mom."

His voice is quiet and harsh and impatient. He wills her not to cry, to make this easy, to get out of his way so he can disappear.

Leave me alone. I'm an adult now, not your child any longer—never your child, never yours. Let me go. All we do is hurt each other. Don't you want me to leave, Mom?

"Izaya. I. I…"

I love—

He's disgusted by this show of emotion.

"What? What is it?"

She's cut by his voice, momentarily startled in to silence.

And that's when Izaya sees Kururi in her mother's car in the background. Izaya stares over his mother's shoulders at Kururi, and their eyes connect. Kururi stares back at him boldly, challenging him through the winter air to not run away this time. Izaya sees his sister's heart beating like hurt in the freezing air, and somehow he is able to admit to himself what he has done. Kururi lets her wounds show, because she knows this is the only way. She dares him to let their mother's fingers slide down his cheek. She dares him to mature, to be an adult, for God's sake, to be strong for their mother, because she is weakened by you. Stop being a child, Izaya. Stop running away. Look what you've done to us. Look what you've done to the woman who gave birth to you, who brought you into this world. Look at how she cries alone in the night, and listen to her wounded words. She has given her life for you, and if you don't let her touch you this once everything will die. Mairu and Mom will grow apart, and I'll leave with Mairu to some strange city, and we'll _never _find each other again. The next time you see me, I'll be dead and you'll be left wondering what exactly happened, when we grew apart. How would you like that? A lifetime of loneliness—in exchange for five minutes, five seconds. Can't you just stay still, for a moment?

He does. He doesn't move when his mother puts her hands on top of his cheeks. He closes his eyes, and the lids are white flags again. Her hands are so thin, so pale, so full of veins, ugly against the smooth skin of his face. He remembers distantly that her hands were always strong, smooth, and young. What has happened to this woman?

The tragedy that is your existence, Izaya.

But he cannot stand like this forever. He pulls away, almost gently. His feet are practically shaking with the need to leave. His heart burns with thoughts: he belongs to no one. He needs to travel, to go to strange cities and talk with strange people and bathe in the lives of other humans, not be reminded of his own humanity.

"Bye, Mom."

He begins to walk away.

"Izaya!"

He stops, but does not turn.

"I love you, Izaya. Your mother loves you."

Every day, every minute and second. For the rest of my life. You are my greatest regret, my firstborn, my eternal love. I will never stop yearning for you, even if I don't have the strength to stop you.

Izaya opens his mouth to the cold air and his mother's heartbeats. The world looks full of possibilities for this wanderer, none of which lie near home.

But it _is _nice to know he has one, in case he gets sick again.

And so, the smile, this time, isn't as false as the ones he usually gives. It's not really concealing anything. And though the emotion on his face isn't joy or happiness or contentment, it's close enough—to the truth— that the day seems lighter already. The sun is coming out. Their breath puffs in pure white clouds against the air like hope. The storm is blowing away, to return another day far from now. And the knowledge of the time between the leaving and the returning, that is what we all must live for.

"I know, Mom."

He pours his smile in to her eyes like clear water, one hand to another, even as he backs away, even as he turns away.

Five steps out, she can't control her longing. It rings out again.

"Call us sometime, Izaya!"

Her cry echoes through the air of this parting.

He raises his hand in a last goodbye, a slice of black against the pale and watery world.

And he is gone. Again.

Kururi watches from inside the car, her breath fogging the dirty glass window. Mom is still, but she's not crying. Her head is up and her eyes clear as she watches her child escape in to the burning light, and even though the sun probably hurts her eyes, she watches and watches, anyways. And as she walks slowly back to the car, Kururi dares to hope that something here has been healed.

When Izaya shows up at the office, even if he's a lot paler than usual and smells of medicine, even if he _has _been gone for a week, Namie doesn't say anything. She just slams her demands on his desk as usual and leaves. Izaya smiles, propping his still aching head up on one fist, sneezing violently in to a tissue. He remembers how the last time he saw her there was something strange about her eyelashes, something wrong about everything.

It's good to be back.


	8. Epilogue of Sorts, or Family

**8.** _Epilogue of Sorts, or_** Family**

Mom waits and waits by the phone. Izaya doesn't call them back. Kururi isn't surprised. There's almost never a tidy end to these things. At least Mom doesn't cry anymore, but this eternal expectancy is almost as bad. The hope of hearing her son's voice again gets her through another day, another year. But. Nothing happens. Winter turns into spring into summer into another winter, time reeling back on itself in an eternal dance of revolving circles. The cars flow by in streams outside the window to which her nose is pressed, most of which they'll probably never see again. Leaves fall and flowers bloom and mayflies conduct daily funerals to the thrum of the clocks of the city ticking endlessly. Somewhere, out there in this enormous planet, Izaya is probably living his life, his sickness just another fragment of memory in the glass metropolis of his mind. He dances to tunes they cannot hear, even if they strain their ears listening. As their household manages to haul itself, yet again, into the semblance of normality, Kururi isn't quite sure what happened that winter so long ago, whether healing or injuring or something more, something else entirely.

This kind of love, she thinks, is the kind only a family can have, and she smiles a little at the world.

**Author's Note: **_Ugh_. It's over! Finally! This story is depressing, I know. But the idea came, and then the whole thing just kind of poured out in one sitting. I know DRRR is a humorous series, and I really have no idea why I stuck _Izaya _of all people in this type of fic, but… anyways, I'll stop making excuses now.

Izaya is such a bad kid. :[

**~ ThreeSmallCrows**


End file.
